Coloured Rainbow
by Letsrevitup
Summary: The life of Arthur Shappey after he loses what once was his family, when GERT-I crashes.


Arthur wasn't cold, no. Even though it was snowing and he had been standing there for two hours now, he wasn't cold. No. It all looked pretty, the flowers covered in a white layer, he decided. Younger him would've probably said "Brilliant!" but now that he was 70 years old, he smiled and kept silent. He brought flowers with him today. Orchids, Douglas would've liked them. They were right next to each other, the three headstones. Martin's family was okay with letting Arthur decide where to bury him, Douglas had no living family left apart from his ex wives and his daughter, and mum, Carolyn, well, even though they were not here anymore Arthur still wanted them to be that little family they once were.

He had been here so many times now. He took care of the graves, bringing fresh flowers now and then and cleaning the headstones. That one time when he was 37 and he was practically bouncing in front of their graves, proud of his latest achievement, finally learning the correct phonetic alphabet. That would be where he met his wife, who heard him recite it to the place where their remains lay. Ten years later, it would be the place he took his daughter to, when she asked where her other grandparents were. He held her hand as they stared at the ground and she tried to read the fading text on the stones. Somehow, even though they were gone, Arthur's life still seemed to keep revolving around the other three crew members of MJN air.

A simple game he always played when he was here, was spotting colours and thinking of memories they reminded him of. The snow, pure white. Polar bears. The flight to Qikiqtarjuaq. A yellow car passed by and Arthur smiled. Yellow, like a lemon. He still played "Traveling lemon" with his daughter, even now that she was an adult. The green of the grass, peeking out from under the snow reminded him of all the take-offs and landings at Fitton, gliding over green fields. A woman walked in the distance, wearing an orange coat. The shade of Martin's hair. Oh, how Douglas had teased the new captain when they saw he was ginger. He loved this game. It made the world a bit more of a colourful place. His eyes glided to a red candle, burning on a grave a few rows further.

Red, the flashing warning lights. The red sunset, the last thing they saw when GERTI dropped out of the sky. Blood, pain. Arthur shook his head, trying to get rid of the bad memories that mixed with the good. Opening his eyes, seeing Martin lying opposite from him, freckles no longer visible under the blood. Red, like the flames, everywhere. Mum, where was mum?

After the hospital came the arguing. Arthur wasn't quite capable of living on his own and he had lost pretty much everything. GERTI was beyond repair and without three quarters of the crew and no airplane, MJN was finished of course. That left the debts. He had felt like a puppet on strings, with his strings constantly passing on to another puppeteer. There was paperwork, lawyers, everything all at once was pressing a weight down on Arthur and he wanted to shut himself away from it. He did that. He stood there, unfocused gaze, while everyone else tried to sort out his life. He let them. He didn't understand most of it anyway. The only thing that constantly repeated itself in his mind were the faces and names of what had been the greatest, to him anyways, airline in history. Of course he was in a state of shock. He lost his mother and two of his best friends. There was one ray of light however. Herc had heard all about it and you didn't need a course at Ipswich to see that Herc was mourning for Carolyn, his old friend Douglas and perhaps even Martin, for the short time he had known him. Herc would cut loose some of the strings and help him lift some of the weight by sorting out a lot for Arthur.

It wasn't easy, had it ever been? Arthur certainly lacked some intelligence, he knew that, but he wasn't a complete idiot. Eventually it was decided that he could live on his own, granted that he underwent special classes. To help him, they said. He was also obliged to see a psychologist, more for the aftershock of the actual crash rather than his "challenged" mind. She was nice, his psychologist, but for the first time ever in his life, Arthur didn't feel like talking much. On the first visit, he sat in the room, while silence dominated most of the conversation. He answered some basic questions, but found himself on the verge of crying every time he thought about the whole mess that had landed him in this small office, time slowly ticking away on the clock. There was a rainbow in the sky an Arthur stared at it through the window. A rainbow seemed to start on the ground, leap into the air and come back down. Much like a flight on an airplane. The rainbow stood bravely in the sky, somewhere Arthur couldn't touch it. He never went on an airplane anymore. Not that he was scared really, but it didn't feel right, chasing rainbows without his family. That was when he invented his game, to chase them on the ground. His pot of gold at the end were the treasured memories.

He had nightmares for a while. Waking up in the middle of the night, screaming and scared. He would wander through his new house, waking Snoopadoop and carrying her to bed with him. She would lick his face, trying to tell him it would be alright. It never would be. He waited and waited in the dark for his mother to come into his room, tuck him in and watch him go back to sleep again with a smile on her face.

He would eventually stop screaming when waking up and turn his face to the side to find his wife sleeping next to him. Arthur watched her for a while. She was not moving and her eyes were closed and Arthur started focusing on hearing her breathe, the only thing that would keep him sane. The only thing that would tell him it was a dream. But still, he did realize that it had really happened, the crash, the blood, the tears, and he couldn't take it anymore. He got out of bed silently and padded into their kitchen.

She woke, to find the other side of the bed cold and abandoned. At first she was confused, then scared and panicked. But when on the stairs, she heard a faint humming coming from the kitchen. There he was, Arthur was cooking in the middle of the night, his back facing her. She stood there and watched him, carefully studying the ingredients, trying to figure out the recipe and finally just throwing most of it in a bowl and stir it. He started humming again. She knew the tune. A song called "Those magnificent men in their flying machines". His eyes were focused, but sad. He looked pleased with what he had made, but he looked tired. She walked up to him and embraced him from the back. He noticed her and sat, whatever it was that he had made, down and just leaned backwards into the hug.

That was how they found out cooking and other domestic chores were therapeutic for Arthur. He had hoovered GERTI a lot of times and it made his new house feel more like home. His wife worked, he cleaned the house and cooked. He got better and better at it. He loved seeing the smiles on his wife's and daughter's face when he had made another great meal. When she was old enough, he drove his daughter to school for the first time. He would give her a homemade lunch, kiss her on the head and tell her to be careful. He watched her run towards the building and he felt a huge wave of emotions flooding over him. He watched, until she vanished behind the doors and he noticed that single tear rolling down his cheek. That same day, he would be in the graveyard, speaking to the graves, telling them about his daughter going to school for the first time. When he finally got up to leave, he left three freshly made lunches on each of the graves.

Time flew by so quickly. He could've never imagined it, till the day finally arrived when he would wake up in the morning, walk downstairs and try to calm his panicking daughter who couldn't find her wedding train.

It was beautiful. He swore he had never seen a bigger smile on his daughter's face when she walked down the aisle. The whole wedding took place outside, on a summer day, though they were lucky with the weather. It had just stopped raining as Arthur sat next to his wife and the couple exchanged vows. Tears rolling down his face, Arthur turned his head towards the sky. Above the newly wed couple, there was a rainbow.

Arthur felt his old bones beginning to protest against the cold and the standing and he leaned on his walking stick. "Skipper. Douglas. Mum. You're flying somewhere above now. Will you soon welcome me onboard?"


End file.
